


going to take you for a ride

by fated_addiction



Category: K-pop, Real Person Fiction, SM Entertainment | SMTown, So Nyuh Shi Dae | Girls' Generation, 소녀시대 | Girls' Generation | SNSD
Genre: F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4927276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tiffany is the one that breaks the news to her.</i>
</p><p>OR when the Universe has other plans for your promotional cycle, even though this is your first solo album and you're still annoyed about the pink hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	going to take you for a ride

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know.

Tiffany is the one that breaks the news to her, calls her one morning, mid-promotional cycle for her solo album, and tentatively, in a very gentle, hesitant way, decides to go: "Jessica posted something on Instagram, it's probably going to give you a headache, but I think it's really sweet because she's like, yay! Good for you, which means maybe we can all sit down and have lunch like normal adults?"

If this were a romantic comedy, Taeyeon would either be freaking out and making a face, or just making faces and settled in some kind of confused denial. Like that time they all found out that Sooyoung was going to New York with Minho.

This isn't a romantic comedy though.

Instead, she is still in bed. Her eyes are caked with sleep. She's missing a sock; it's somewhere on the floor, or lost when she was on her way to the bathroom the night before, stumbling and half-drunk with exhaustion and glitter from the live television stage she had too.

"I don't understand anything you just said," she says finally, sliding out of bed. Her voice cracks. Her shoulders are sore too. She has a thin schedule today; one music show, the radio with Soonkyu, and then groceries since, well, she is going to have to learn how to feed herself at some point, of course.

Tiffany sighs, then hesitates some more. She hears a car door slam.

"You should probably stay away from the Internet for awhile," she says slowly. Taeyeon imagines Tiffany biting her lip and shuffling her feet into the ground. "Or let someone from the company handle it."

But Taeyeon has already switched her best friend to speaker, opens her app and scrolls through her notifications, wide-eyed and confused. She sees all the alerts, names of fans and comes, mostly blurb after blurb after blurbs of hearts and other emoticons.

"Oh god," she breathes.

It seems like the Universe has decided to wake up too.

 

 

 

 

 

September comes and goes. The summer too; it's a blur of a lot of things, from growing up to acceptance and a weight that she's beginning to think she is going to carry forever or something dramatic like that. She calls herself things like "a little braver" and wiser too, even though she will never go and say those words -- "I am a little wiser because of the choices that I decided to make and take part in."

So she keeps it simple.

She tells the company representative that she wants a private lunch. She tells the company that she doesn't want the girls to know. She tells the company that they have done enough and now, a year later, Jessica _and_ Sooyeon are a private, family matter for all of them.

They let her have the lunch.

She is going to make them a lot of money, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

The restaurant is in Gangnam.

She knows that it's a couple of blocks away from the Jung sisters' apartment. She knows that it's a tourist trap too and when she enters, wide sunglasses, ducking shyly as the company rep points to the back of the restaurant, she has to laugh at the gaudy interiors and over the top, dynasty theme. Taeyeon is all nerves, regardless, and her hands twitch over her jeans, her clutch, and anything else she can grab onto.

She spots Jessica before the table.

It's different, you know, when you see her in celebrity photographs, when your role as a leader of an idol group is to monitor all your members regardless. She seen everything from her fashion week stint to how successful she is in China. Jessica, out of all of them, was the most charming for variety, knew how to be hot and cold without giving too much away, and was endearingly honest about her strengths and limitations.

But this isn't a photograph from the Internet and Taeyeon sort of stumbles, long abandoned by the company rep and waitress, staring at her former member with a tight throat, bewildered wonder, and an ache that she hasn't felt in a really, really long time.

In her head, she counts the rest of the steps to the table. She gently puts her clutch in front her, curling her hands around the back of her chair and sighing softly.

Jessica looks up and through her bangs. The corners of her mouth tug and she tilts her head, regarding her with an unreadable gaze.

"Well," she says and her voice is huskier than Taeyeon remembers. "I didn't think I would have gotten you in trouble."

It takes a minute for Taeyeon to find her voice. It takes another one for her to sit down and hide her nerves.

"I didn't think you would listen to anything," she says.

Jessica doesn't flinch. "Fair enough," she agrees.

There is tea on the table between them. She smells the floral from the jasmine and tenses a little more. You don't forget the little things about the people you love, she thinks. It's even more unnerving when they remember the little things about you.

"So," Taeyeon says.

"So," Jessica echoes.

Taeyeon has never liked fall.

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone knows about that time she was a trainee, how she was some kind of prodigy and of course, it's always been Tiffany that has been there at her side the longest, Tiffany who has seen her at her darkest an her worst. She can recite the line like scales, or the lines that dig deep into her palms, the ones that always concerned her grandmother when she would visit -- "You're going to love the hardest," she would always say, smiling sadly.

But no one knows that she loved Jessica the most.

A memory:

 

 

 

 

 

The first time she kisses Jessica coincides with the first time she calls her Sooyeon and also Tiffany has gone home to visit families for the holidays so the room that they share is empty, lonely, and smells too much like Taeyeon's worries and hopes.

Jessica comes to find her after dance practice, her hair wet and slicked back, a t-shirt tucked into a pair of shorts. It's summer, or something like it, and all the windows in the dorm are open, framed by the faint music in Soonkyu's room and the baseball game that Sooyoung is watching with Yuri in the living room, their laughter sticking to the walls.

There are music sheets all over her bed. A CD has already fallen on the floor. Frustration, of course.

Jessica sits next to her on the bed. "You need a break," she says gently.

"I think I could --" she looks up at the other girl, anxious and ashamed that she's letting it show. She feels ten times too young, instead being able to weed through her issues. She knows her voice is flat today. She knows it's because she's tired.

"No," Jessica says. Her fingers curl around the music. She stacks the sheets together and puts them on Tiffany's bed. She moves back into bed with Taeyeon. "It's not going to get any better if you're tired."

"You're taking my lines," she says dryly.

Jessica smiles and it's bright, bold enough to make Taeyeon's stomach launch into knots. For awhile, she thought it was some kind of form of envy.

"Someone has to," she teases, and instead of offering a distracting, Jessica stretches out into the bed, her hair spilling to the pillow behind her. She reaches forward and grabs some of the blankets, tugging Taeyeon to lie down next to her.

"I can't, you --" Taeyeon starts to protest, but her fingers are laced into Jessica's and she turns onto her side, only to watch as the other girl starts to close her eyes. "You just want an excuse to sleep," she says with amusement.

"Yep." Jessica's voice is dry. "I'm hoping it translates over to you somehow."

The thing is they're babies at this point and Taeyeon is more than aware of that, devoted to proving things like longevity because she's been forced to go to meetings and learn sponsor language and when you're the leader, Taeyeon-ah, you change a lot faster and get a lot older.

She's quiet this way and looks over Jessica to the sheets of music that are half-tucked into the pillows. She shifts a little closer, intending to be a little silly but meaning to go and grab the music anyway. But Jessica's leg comes up, slides between her own legs, and trips Taeyeon into her, over her, and startling them both.

"Oh," Taeyeon hears herself breathe. "Well --"

Jessica's eyes open slowly, her mouth parting into some kind of yawn. Her nose wrinkles too and Taeyeon laughs, surprised.

"Or you can stay like this," Jessica tells her, reaching up and brushing her fingers against her face.

What happens next is more than girls being girls, or anything that has to do with youth and age and close quarters; Taeyeon just knows herself best in that moment. She thinks: she didn't have to come and sit with her in the room, she's really pretty when she looks at her like _that_ , and the knots in her stomach are more like butterflies, pushing forward because this feels like something, something larger than she knows how to know.

Taeyeon is the one that kisses her first. Jessica is soft underneath her, softer against her mouth, and curls her fingers into the collar of her shirt because Sooyeon kisses like she means it and without a single regret. She tastes sweet and her tongue in Taeyeon's mouth sweeps against her teeth, over her own tongue, pressing and lapping away at some kind of taste that just makes her head spin.

She is going to remember that clearly.

It's how she writes her first love song.

 

 

 

 

 

There is nothing loud about the Jessica in front of her, from the pressed, clean lines of her blouse and the high waisted jeans that she wears. There's a lot of color in her face and she looks relaxed, warm wrinkles in the corner of her mouth as she thanks the waitress for the tea and orders them both sashimi to spare since, apparently, this is what the restaurant is known for.

It takes a second for Taeyeon to reprocess the reality of this. It takes another for her to blurt out, "I never saw your post."

Jessica just laughs.

Her hands curve around her tea cup. "I don't regret it," she says, "if that's why you're here and what you want to ask me."

"I didn't think you'd buy my album." Taeyeon's mouth slides into a thin line. She looks down at her tea too.

"Why?" There's no bite in Jessica's voice. "I love music too, you know." Then wistfully, Jessica sighs. "I miss it a lot, actually."

"I --" Taeyeon hesitates. "I'm sure you could start singing again," she says.

And this is what adulthood does. Jessica tilts her head to the side. She doesn't laugh. She just smiles a little and shakes her head, as if there were some kind of secret that Taeyeon wasn't privy too. It was like this before, and in a roundabout way, when they were in some kind of weird, pseudo-fighting place that neither of them admitted to, she would always see Jessica this way. It wasn't even Jessica; it was Sooyeon and Sooyeon with a secret that no one else could have.

"I wish they had decided on a pastry shop," Jessica remarks, instead. "This is way too tacky for trying to be low key."

"You know what the fans think though."

Jessica shrugs. "People are going to think what they want regardless. It's not going to hurt if they see us together; it's good for your album, my business, and anything the girls do after. People love happy endings. And cake."

"Idiot," Taeyeon mumbles, almost affectionately.

Jessica leans forward, amused. She gets this glint in her eyes that Taeyeon feels like she hasn't seen in years, really. Her hands grab hers, squeeze, and Taeyeon feels her heart stop, then launch into her throat.

"Let's go," Jessica says.

It takes everything in her to try and protest, but she's already halfway out of her seat, her arm tucked through Jessica's as they escape the restaurant, all giggles as they pass the company rep's table without any sort of acknowledgment or backwards glance.

Someone else can have the bad day anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

"You'd think we were secretly dating," Jessica remarks, stepping into the house. They are both hand in hand with cupcakes from a sweets' shop they passed on the way; they lost photographers somewhere in an alley and the headlines have already pushed themselves into new's alerts from her phone. 

Taeyeon follows and kicks off her shoes, neatly stacking them next to Jessica's. She steps into the apartment, following her up the stairs too.

"This wouldn't be the kind of first date I'd take you on though," Taeyeon says. Then stops herself, blushing.

"Oh?"

They reach the kitchen and Jessica takes the cupcakes from her, pulling them out of the box and stacking them onto a plate. She's a little flushed from being outside.

"I don't usually believe the hype." Jessica's smirking, pulling a cupcake off the plate. She cuts it in half and offers Taeyeon a piece. "You did take me to a really cheesy restaurant," she teases too.

Taeyeon blushes. "Shut up," she says. She reaches for the cupcake, but Jessica bats her hand away. She offers her the piece again, bring it up to her mouth. "I wouldn't have picked that place either."

Her throat dries and she never looks away from Jessica, taking a bite of the cupcake. She bites into frosting, then nips at the pads of Jessica's fingers, watching intently as the other woman's expression changes, her eyes darkening. There's a slight hitch in her breathing and Taeyeon licks her lips.

"Date night at home is nice," she murmurs. She picks up a piece of cupcake, offering it to Jessica. "I can cook," she adds.

"I'm a picky eater," Jessica replies. She bites into the cupcake next, licking away at the frosting from Taeyeon's fingers. It makes her head spin a little; she doesn't hide what she's doing and it almost feels like a dare.

"I remember." The color of Taeyeon's voice changes into something huskier and with weight. She steps into Jessica, almost over her. "Cucumbers," she says, amused. "And things touching each other on the plate."

Jessica shrugs. "I'm a hard sell." She's blushing too. It takes a second for Taeyeon to realize; the color in her face is no longer from the cold and outside.

But it's like they forever dance upon this point, whatever it may be. There were boys and other girls and then boys again, writing love stories that neither of them share but own up to in their own ways. There are pieces of Jessica that she still wants to know and wonders about; it's the way things ended, she always confesses to the other girls, drunkenly or otherwise.

Here though, in her kitchen, the silence stretches into something a little more complicated. It feels like a confession. It feels like a starting point. It's painful and abrupt and almost too real. I love you, she could say. I miss you, she could say. It doesn't feel like the right time. It only feels like the place.

"Can I come back?" Taeyeon asks, then, surprised at how steady her voice is.

Jessica looks at her this way, still close and very, very real. Slowly, her hand rises and brushes over Taeyeon's face. She touches the crown of her forehead, brushing at her bangs, and then dragging her fingers along the side of her face, over her jaw, and then back up against her lips. Taeyeon remembers how sweet her fingers tasted and then her mind goes to her mouth, the column of her throat, and every sharp angle and curve that makes her after that. She thinks: I want to kiss you, but doesn't say that out loud either.

Instead, Jessica is the one.

Her mouth touches hers tentatively, too soft to be nothing but shy, but warm, wet, and sweet as if they were still too young and maybe even a little ageless. She opens her mouth back against Jessica's though, breathes and sighs when the other woman's teeth sink into her lip too. Somehow they turn into the counter, then the sink, limbs and hands as they try and figure out how to realign and fit. She feels just as clumsy as an adult, but a little braver as her hands slide away from Jessica's face and hair to her shoulders, then along her breasts and over her hips as her fingers tighten and drag under her shirt. One of them makes a low sound, breathless, and it pulls at Taeyeon's belly, draws at the heat, and brings back the reality of her feelings. They were never the memory.

It's a second first kiss.

The best kind, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

She never answers any questions about that meeting, or their escape to the pastry shop, or the fact that in her next photo shoot, Taeyeon wears denim from Jessica's winter line, marveling at how soft it is as she unapologetically loses herself to a lot of private memories. People speculate; they both keep the truth to themselves, planning another dinner, a real dinner even though Taeyeon knows that all she's going to want to do is kiss every word off and away from her mouth.

But Jessica is cornered in the airport, smiling behind a pair of large sunglasses as she ducks into a car to go home. She's assaulted by a number a questions, including one about mending bridges, or whatever they call it these days.

"I'm going to cause trouble," she says into a camera, grinning. She shrugs lazily, in a very Jessica kind of way. "It was barely a first date, you know."

The video makes Taeyeon laugh.


End file.
